It was day one of Movember. There were a few bald faces among my male colleagues, myself included, and it was refreshing, like a cool spring rain. But then I noticed another such colleague, hunched behind his computer, with five days worth of stubble etched on his face. "What, no Movember?" I asked.
He shook his head dismissively, as if I was crazy for even bothering to ask. Me? Grow a moustache? Piss off, would ya? He was on the phone at the time so I probably shouldn't have read much into it, but the combination of a hairy face on the first day of Movember and the absence of caffeine in my system really pissed me off.
I mean, come on, man! No moustache? You're not going to partake in the single greatest act of masculine solidarity? Where's your communal spirit, brother? And more importantly, where's your sense of self-effacing humour?
I said none of this, for fear of seeming like a jackass among my colleagues. Instead, I said something like, "Well, if you get prostate cancer, don't ask me for help," which still made me sound like a jackass... but you know what? Whatever. I'm supporting Movember.
Movember, for those don't know, is an annual event where men grow moustaches throughout November (duh) to raise awareness and money for prostate cancer. It either began in an Adelaide pub in 1999 as a friendly challenge to raise money for the RSPCA (according to Wikipedia) or in a Melbourne pub in 2003 as a friendly competition among friends to bring moustaches back into fashion (according to Adam Garone, the guy who supposedly came up with the idea). Either way, some men started the idea in some Australian bar fond of moustaches.
"Movember, at its heart, is fun and irreverent, a little bit anti-establishment," Garone, CEO and executive director of Movember, told the Toronto Star this week.
By the following year, surprised by the amount of traction it received - and the backlash it received from girlfriends and workplace managers - he decided the movement could be put to good use. Noticing the success of the pink ribbon challenging the stigma of breast cancer for women, and all the money it had raised to fight it, the Movember team used the moustache as a furry ribbon of sorts, to do the same for prostate cancer.
By 2004, it was spreading awareness and raising funds across Australia and New Zealand. By 2007, the Movember Foundation had set up shop in four other countries, including Canada. More than 450,000 people participated in 2010 and since its inception, the movement has raised $176 million worldwide. The movement has ambassadors in celebrities and athletes.
This year, Whistler Exposed, Theta Omega Mo Whistler Chapter (or, the "Fraternity of Bad Facial Hair") and iPartyinWhistler.com have launched a Movember In Whistler campaign through Movember Canada, rallying all local businesses together for the cause.
"We firmly believe that because of Movember, within our lifetimes, surely we'll be living in a world where no man dies from prostate cancer," Garone told the Star.
Dubbed Mo Bros, the men involved are essentially walking billboards promoting men's health and raising awareness for prostate cancer. That's the intention, at least. One need only type the word "Movember" in a Google search to see that this has moved well beyond the act of fundraising. Garone's initial ambition has come true: The moustache is very much back in fashion.
Hundreds of news stories have been written about Movember in publications from around the Western world. The Facebook statuses of both men and women were heralding the event earlier this week. The moustache has become something of an icon and Movember is something we look forward to every year.
On Tuesday, one of my female Facebook friends updated her status to, "My favourite time of year! MOVEMBER!! Happy happy happy..."
I asked her why she, a bald-faced woman, was so gung ho about all these moustaches. She replied, "I find it sexy when men are not afraid to look funny / different. And I find it tres cool when men think about important causes, like battling prostate cancer. I also enjoy the humour and playfulness the event always entails."
Imagine, a world where women swooning at the sight of our moustaches, in a realm free of prostate cancer - all of it made possible because of an obsession with our own facial hair. Because, at the end of the day, that's all this is about. It's all it ever was about. Men love their facial hair. They have competitions about who can grow the biggest and best bush of facial hair.
I've written at some length about how beards are the penultimate sign of a man's virility and Movember takes this one step further. Prostate cancer sadly has little to do with it - it was an issue tacked on, for good will - because for a majority of the people involved, it's more about showing off their manhood in a humorous way. Movember has become the de facto celebration of hairy men. It's the Mother's Day of the moustache, only in true manly fashion it needed to be bigger and better than any daylong celebration .
Twenty-four hours? Pfffff. We demand a whole damn month , so each one of us can take the world by the ears, pull it real close to our upper lip and say, "Looky here."
